On the other hand nazi symbol are banned or severly limited is many country in europe, so if that was a valid rational then it would be in favor of allowing tits and banning adolf.

But as the forums servers are physically located in the USA and Gentoo is registered in USA too the offical rules and the moderators/admins need to obey the US legislation - which is fine with pictures of Adolf and his guys but has some (extremly weird -from an european point of view-) issues with nudity.

Just to be clear, I do understand the argument about the physical location of the server, but at some point in the thread the argument shifted to 'nudity is forbidden where I am located - me the readed ).
By the same token the initiator of this thread has advanced the fact that webmaster in germany are liable if they host such item on their web site. (I certainly hope that the German Tought Police has better thing to do than cauming through the 100K+ profile to find the couple of nazi reference), but still, as you mentionned the server is hosted outside of germany, so that argument is not relevant.

Maybe we should start a collect to mouve the server in a free country

Think4UrS11 wrote:

Like it or not - the day politicans will understand the internet is the day before the sun turns into a big red star...

Yep! And you know what: that is TRULY universal, we all have that in common, regardless of nationality

Surely I never mind it. It just a way to express myself.
Don't take every word directly what it says.

Then I'm sorry for misunderstanding you, but your statement was not clearly identifiable as a joke.

lefsha wrote:

But it still the truth. The rules in Germany stay over the people.

I'll come to that later on.

lefsha wrote:

But you told me that my opinion is so far from the truth like St.Peterburg from Hawaii...
Is it not kind of negative thoughts? I didn't took it this way.
But just like a joke.

It was meant sarcastic, of course. A result of the described misunderstanding. I apologize.

lefsha wrote:

About things you have not or you have seen in other countries.
Trust me, every one will see what he wants to see!
One guy on this topic have seen that Stalin killed more then 30 mln people.
It's hard to explain him that is not truth, because it the same like to explain
to a muslim that there is no Allah, or explain to christian, that there is no Christi.
and so on.

It's always like that when it comes to peoples believes. I won't comment on the Stalin discussion as I don't know enough about it and there is hardly any evidence that could prove any of the figures.

lefsha wrote:

If you have been to some country for two weeks, all you can say about it is:
There is <name> this country in this world.
You able to say something about the weather, nature and what have you did there.
Mostly that's all.

You you want to say something about people there you have to spend certain time
in that country. And it is not even months...

Your opinion - mine is different. And I think it's pretty pointless to argue about the exact time you need to spend in a foreign country until you get a full understanding of it. Maybe your time in Germany didn't suffice, too? It's not about the timespan you spent there - it's about the people you met, that will form your opinion.

lefsha wrote:

Don't take it personaly, but a lot of things dependce on you!
But it doesn't mean that you or someone of your nation are bad.
You just have a different look.

Your statements about Germans sound like they were ultimate truths. They aren't and that's what displeases me. There are no ultimate truths. People (even German ones) are individuals.

lefsha wrote:

Take a look at Latinos. Most of german not able to dance like them.
Not able to live like them. Not able to feel like them.

It doesn't mean that it is bad for German.
Opposite example. Latinos can't be such developers
or such engineers, physicists, workers like german.

I hope you don't mean that this is a genetical thing.
If a German gets raised in a latin environment then he'll probably dance as good as the others. And during the football World Cup Germany proved that we can celebrate and have fun like any other nation.
And of course a latino can also be as good as a engineer, etc. as a German - that's simply a matter of education.

lefsha wrote:

Don't you know that german word "Ordnung" is famous around the world!

And so is the word "Zeitgeist". There is a change of generations in Germany right now and this also means that the zeitgeist changes. (I really wondered that you didn't choose the word "Verbot" to make your point )

lefsha wrote:

But you have to see, that every medal has two sides.
That german can't live without rules is another side of the same medal.

If you disagree with this side you should automatically disagree
with other one. I'm not sure you are ready for this.

No, it isn't. Who is German? By that definition I'm certainly not German.
Let me cite a beatiful poem by Günther Eich:

Translation:
No, don't sleep,
while the leaders of the world are busy.
Be distrustful of their power,
which they are pretending to aquire for you!
Watch out, that your hearts aren't empty,
when they expect the emptiness of your hearts!
Do useless things, sing the songs,
which aren't expected to come from your mouth!
Be inconvinient (to them),
be the Sand and not the oil on the the gears of the world

(Just noticed that it loses much of its beauty when translated )

I grew up with that poem. My grandfather raised my mother and my uncles/aunts in a very strict manner (by typical German values you would say). He was a POW in Russia for more than five years and that really influenced the education of his children. Because of this my mother swore to herself that her children should never be raised that way.
We were always raised in a very liberal way and the believe in choice and we were taught that we should always distrust authorities and their rules.

And when I look into my generation then I see lots of other people that were raised the same way and who have the same attitude. And that's why I foundnd the phrase "Germans will die without their rules" insulting.

lefsha wrote:

Let's just take a famous one.
The rule, that forbid for women to wear a kerchief (Kopftuch)
in schools.
It's crazy for me how it could be possible to forbid to wear things.

I agree that it would be stupid to forbid pupils a kerchief, but I can agree on forbidding it for teachers (if they don't teach islamic religion).
So there isn't any dress-code in Russian companies or public bureaus?
I can work behind a counter of a bank with a helmet and a tatoo in the face?
Crucifixes were removed from German classrooms because someone sued the government. And I agree that there shouldn't be any religious symbols in the schools and that the teachers should be neutral on the subject of religion, politics and stuff.

(This is the point where you probably dance around your computer saying: "I knew it - he loves the rules!!")

lefsha wrote:

The situation is more strange because of the weak knowledge
in Germany what really does it mean.

Maybe it's my weak knowledge, but afaik there is nothing in the koran than clearly states that a woman has to wear a kerchief. It's a matter of interpretation. There are islamic groups that say it's a obligation to wear a kerchief and others say it's not. So this subject isn't as easy as it seems.

lefsha wrote:

The official version is that Kopftuch is kind of attribute of muslim
religion...
I mostly sure that you think so as many other people, besides you
have visited a lot of countries.

That is not truth. At least because it's very comon to wear kerchief
in Russia for women who are ortodox or even religionsless.

By this you make your own country ridicule.

For many people forbid to wear kerchief is the same like
for you forbid to wear jeans or t-shirt.

I don't see a problem. They are allowed to wear the kerchief in their freetime.
I also had to wear a suit in my last job or a stupid uniform when I worked as a mailman.

I just have this funny picture in my head of a policeman in Russia who is wearing cowboy-boots and a kilt, because they don't have to wear a uniform there.

lefsha wrote:

Let's make an experiment. Have you ever been to England?

Unfortunately not, but I'm planning to go there as soon as possible (as soon as I have some money).

lefsha wrote:

I'm quite sure, that I could show you, that your look was not
sharp enough.

And I'm quite sure that my look was at least as sharp as yours. _________________Conservative Trigger Warning: (Thx to Old_School)
Quoting Breitbart News is one step away from quoting "Mein Kampf".

Actually you have the proportion reversed.
displaying 'genitalia' to minors is not illegal is almost every country that uphold some kind of freedom of speech- with the notable exception of the USA...
I don't think the that english newspaper are out-of-reach of minors, and last time I checked - granted it was a long time ago, there was nice tits involved in page 3. Doing my homeworkd, I checked and here you go: http://www.page3.com that is still true. Please notice the complet absence of 'adult warning')
in the same vein, check
http://www.tvmag.com/jsp/prog/fiche.jspx?idProg=16189456
the TV program for next monday on channel 6, in France.

Ah, I suppose you are right. I was more after the general feeling that majority of countries I know have concept of age restrictions for X rated movies etc., which lead me think that legal restriction on pornography would be a majority, but it is true I don't know how much these restrictions have power in the Internet distribution of pornography.

Quote:

On the other hand nazi symbol are banned or severly limited is many country in europe

Is it? I think 2 have been mentioned in this thread so far? Of course my impression is mostly based on what I know from popular culture references to nazism, because as far as I've heard, games like Wolfenstein 3D or certain national socialistic music bands have only been censored in German market. That's why I assumed it wouldn't be widely spread, but as said, I am not a lawyer.

Quote:

so if that was a valid rational then it would be in favor of allowing tits and banning adolf.

Only valid rationale I can see of, is the law that binds Gentoo organisation as owner of this web server. Everything else is bound to be subjective, arbitrary decision of some level. (And that's why I, as a wearer of shiny red badge, am trying hard not to make any personal subjective statements not based on the law in this discussion).

On the other hand nazi symbol are banned or severly limited is many country in europe, so if that was a valid rational then it would be in favor of allowing tits and banning adolf.

But as the forums servers are physically located in the USA and Gentoo is registered in USA too the offical rules and the moderators/admins need to obey the US legislation - which is fine with pictures of Adolf and his guys but has some (extremly weird -from an european point of view-) issues with nudity.

Like it or not - the day politicans will understand the internet is the day before the sun turns into a big red star...

So according to US legislation you already need to censor/outlaw some things like nudity and...

amne wrote:

Philantrop wrote:

Secondly, there's a major difference between allowing symbols of an organisation that murdered 30 to 35 million people and something simply offensive.
[..]
Why not simply outlaw the use of Nazi symbols and be done with it?

If we outlaw them, we should as well outlaw lots of other symbols, Neddy already mentioned a few before. Basically everything is offensive to someone in some culture. So we either need to outlaw everything or nothing.

...doesn't make it true that you should outlaw everything?

amne wrote:

Philantrop wrote:

Is the "friction" caused by such kind of symbols worth your and your fellow moderators'/admins' time?

If we outlawed them by the forum rules, we would be spending our time explaining to Americans why we don't allow freedom of speech. If we don't we spend our time explaing to you why we don't. So it's a lose/lose scenario anyway.

Well, there is no real freedom of speech here in the first place...

You can argue that you only obey US legislation to avoid legal problems. That's OK as long that you don't say these things about freedom of speech.

but it is true I don't know how much these restrictions have power in the Internet distribution of pornography.

No, no, the confusion reside in the assimilation of nudity with pornography.
The page 3 of "The SUN" a brittish newpaper, has a picture of a topless girl, but that is not considered 'pornography'.

That being said, if an avater were to display a 70x70 pixel representation of a couple having sex, on a site like this forum, I seriously doubt that any prosecutor would bother with the case. Bear in mind that in many european countries, citizen don't sue each other. They fill a complain to the state prosecutor, who in turn prosecute - if a law was actually broken. In other word I cannot just drag you in court, I have to convince first the court that I have some kind of a case.

Quote:

Quote:

On the other hand nazi symbol are banned or severly limited is many country in europe

Is it? I think 2 have been mentioned in this thread so far? Of course my impression is mostly based on what I know from popular culture references to nazism, because as far as I've heard, games like Wolfenstein 3D or certain national socialistic music bands have only been censored in German market. That's why I assumed it wouldn't be widely spread, but as said, I am not a lawyer.

I think that indeed germany has a specific taboo about nazi insigna, but in other european countries, there are laws, more generic, that would cover the same thing to some extent.
In France there is a blanket law that forbid public call to violence, racism or similar 'discrimination'. So a nazi flag in itself is not against the law, but if you can make the case that its display is intended to publicly promote violence and racism, then you have a case. Again the context, the actual impact will be taken into account. it's not an automatic slam-dunk. and again a mere display of a nazi flag as an avatar - without the assocaited rethoric - would probably not trigger the minimum threshold for action.

Quote:

Only valid rationale I can see of, is the law that binds Gentoo organisation as owner of this web server. Everything else is bound to be subjective, arbitrary decision of some level. (And that's why I, as a wearer of shiny red badge, am trying hard not to make any personal subjective statements not based on the law in this discussion).

Agreed.
And contrary to what has been said in further post, NO it's not 'OK' nor 'good' that gentoo organization is submitted to US law, it's just a fact of life. If the web server was hosted in Germany, there would be a practical reason for the web-hoster to hunt nazi symbol. It doesn't make it moral, rigth, fair, justified etc... It's just that internet and real life have to collide at one point, and that is usually the sore point. Maybe the server should be hosted in The Netherland... they seem to always be 50 years ahead in term of individual freedom.
[/quote]

So according to US legislation you already need to censor/outlaw some things like nudity and...

No, you don't. There are zillions of host, hosted in the Us that display much more than nudity.
But, in the US, any nutshell with money to spare can sue you. Since there are so many tight-ass religious person, including among judges, fighthing that figth may cost you soem money and surely some time. Even if genntoo would certainly prevail in the end, that couls still take years a thousands of dollars....

But really, gentoo would be more likely to be sued for copyright ingrinment (because soemone uploaded an avatar that is soemhow 'copyrigthed'). I'm actually surprise that no-one has claimed a patent on the idea of 'avatar' in the first place

Bottom line, the gentoo fundation can claim that this level of censur is beyond their control, they have to comply or move to a different couuntry (which will have its own taboo). On the otehr hand, they are under no legal obligation to comply to German Law.

Bear in mind taht Philantrop's complain was about a couple of people using nazi related picture as their avatar. and because of that he demanded that gentoo established a special 'no tolerance' policy... - as in 'no brain involved, just do it'.
The ironic part is that this 'no tolerance' was called in the name of the hatred for the 'intolerant hate mongers'... So, in orther to fight them, we need to become them!

Using nazi symbols is simply bad taste. It would suit the moderators to remove such symbols and avoid that people might think that the Gentoo community endorses such symbols or what they stand for (never mind any legal disclaimer).

Sure, but again, I think that animated gif as avatar is bad taste too....

Hfern wrote:

avoid that people might think that the Gentoo community endorses such symbols

I would rather be in favor of banning any such people (that might think etc...) on the ground that they are too stupid to own a computer.
Seriously, does anyone has ever been under the misguided assumption that the avatar choice of any given member imply some kind of 'gentoo's approval' ?

---
My avatar and other informations in my profile, and the content of this post, reflect my own opinions and my opinions alone. These views does not necessarilly represent the views of Gentoo Forums, The Gentoo Fondation or any affilliated organisations of The Gentoo Fundation....

Mmmh, I don't see any problems if nazi symbols would be banned. As these forums are of private nature (in contrast to state-controlled), this has nothing to do with the censorship vs. free speech debate. If I would run a forum, I would ban those stuff. Simply for the fact that they are against everything I stand for.

OTOH, is there a better way to show that you are a complete moron who deserves no answer than using a nazi avatar?

cousin wrote:
It must be very odd to find Russian or British natzies out there.

bitpicker wrote:

Not at all. Nazi or fascist thought isn't inherently German, just because at some time we used to be very good at it. England has its fair share of the type, France has, I bet Russia has, too. Hell, even the US have theirs. In fact, in various European countries fascists have much larger political influence than they do in Germany (France's LeFebvre comes to mind).

Sure. Anyone can be a racist, no matter the color (or colour). I was refering to Nazis as they were 'cause this "white power" thing is a new phenomenon. Someone with a bad memory of nazies would find anything related to them disturbing. When it doesn't happen, specially in many European countries, I bet they're troubled kids. It's different from what still happens in some parts of East Germany, when it is a reactive behaviour.
Every form of nationalism easily reaches the point where it's ridiculous. It's hilarious to me that A. Hitler even had a German shepherd. Ever browsed the stormfront.org website? You'll see a bunch of racist christians mixed with pseudo-pagans, as if Jesus weren't jewish himself. I myself am a pagan, pantheist and a polytheist because in my mind I've found the way by which all these things are one. When you discard those fat senior american neo-nazis we see that there's a bunch of heavy-metal bands using nazi images: slayer, motorhead, ... Is it the violence that they find amusing? In any way I believe that such imagery should be used sometimes in an artful way to cast away that ridiculous victimship status played sometimes by jews and blacks when they have every right to be proud of their culture(s).

Last edited by cousin on Fri Jul 21, 2006 5:11 am; edited 1 time in total

Bear in mind taht Philantrop's complain was about a couple of people using nazi related picture as their avatar. and because of that he demanded that gentoo established a special 'no tolerance' policy... - as in 'no brain involved, just do it'.

If it was that easy I wouldn't have started this thread but buggered the admins. Or I would have taken action against Gentoo e. V. which is subject to German law, etc. etc.

occ wrote:

The ironic part is that this 'no tolerance' was called in the name of the hatred for the 'intolerant hate mongers'... So, in orther to fight them, we need to become them!

No, we just don't have to put up with those who abuse their freedom to take the freedom away the rest of us enjoy.

If someone cheats in a game, will you play with him again? If someone wants to overthrow our constitutional rights to freedom, do we have to tolerate that and let him go on with it? No, definitely not but that's exactly what Nazi symbols stand for.

If it was that easy I wouldn't have started this thread but buggered the admins.

Which you did, according to the opening sentence of this thread:

Philantrop wrote:

I've recently stumbled upon Nazi symbols on the Gentoo Forums and asked NeddySeagoon about the official policy on using such symbols here.

Philantrop wrote:

No, we just don't have to put up with those who abuse their freedom to take the freedom away the rest of us enjoy.

who is 'we' and how to you make the distinction between 'we' and 'them' ?
Based on you own description of 'them', namely " those who abuse their freedom to take the freedom away", which I presume is really " those who [would] abuse their freedom^H[power] to take the^H freedom away [if they can]", you fit the bill.
if you had the power you would take away the freedom to chose some avatar that you dislike... see the pattern ?

There has been a lot of talk about not forgiving the lessons. yet you still fall for the old trick: finding an expedient and simplistic 'solution' to a complex problem. I don;t know why these 2 or 3 people have decided that such avatar suited their taste, but I know one thing: no sane person would decide to become a nazi, or anything else for that matter, just because they saw an avatar at the corner of a forum.

You used (abused) supreme court precedent earlier. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that the supreme court really have juristiction here, do you think that you have enough to meet the stringent supreme court tests in these cases ?
I suggest you read
Cuffley v. Mickes, 208 F.3d 702 (CA8 2000), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 903 (2001) (This one is about the KKK that wanted to participate in the 'Adopt a Freeway' campaign. the petition was denied, but they won in federal appeal, so basically the Supreme Court validated the 8th Circuit ruling: the state cannot exclude the KKK from their program just because they don't like their ideas, and that the State has not demonstrated compelling interest that would justify the exemption. The 8th circuit decision: "...absent a convincing and constitutional reason for the denial, the evidence leaves us with but one conclusion: that the State denied the Klan's application based on the Klan's beliefs and advocacy. For the last fifty years, the Supreme Court has made it clear that such a denial is unconstitutional..."

DE JONGE v. STATE OF OREGON, 299 U.S. 353 (1937) (different political party, yet similar issue, guilt by association willfull or not)
BOARD OF EDUCATION v. PICO, 457 U.S. 853 (1982) ( Concerning the removal of books deemed to be anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic, from public high school and junior high school libraries....)
SCALES v. UNITED STATES, 367 U.S. 203 (1961) ( Concerning membership of organizations which advocate the overthrow of the United States.... whihc arguably put the defendant in the case in the 'They' column of yours - at least from the point of view of most american)

Oh! and you are going to love this one

STROMBERG v. PEOPLE OF STATE OF CALIFORNIA, 283 U.S. 359 (1931)
The defendant, a youg 19 years old woman was convicted of crime under a California statute that stated:
'Any person who displays a red flag, banner or badge or any flag, badge, banner, or device of any color or form whatever in any public place or in any meeting place or public assembly, or from or on ahy house, building or window as a sign, symbol or emblem of opposition to organized government or as an invitation or stimulus to anarchistic action or as an aid to propaganda that is of a seditious character is guilty of a felony.'
Very close to you 'no nazi flag' statute.
Well, guess what, the Supreme court reversed the judgment!

BTW, have you looked at the secon post of this thread, the avatar of frostschutz ?
If you look closely, you can discern a swastika in there...

Just to be clear, I do understand the argument about the physical location of the server, but at some point in the thread the argument shifted to 'nudity is forbidden where I am located - me the readed ).

Well at least in germany you could (not avoid to) look at nice tits in nearly every store and/or place where magazines can be bought. No protection for minors in any way (only hard pornography is 18+). Nevertheless we (as beeing the mods) don't allow nudity in the forums because of the physics in US, even if i personally have no issue with that. I saw approx. 10.000+ tits before becoming 18 and i'm still a (some would say - to some extend) mentally healthy guy
On the other hand i don't care at all about nazi symbolism too, i.e. i'm against the thought-patterns behind those 'ultra-right-wing' guys but a picture of a swastika or maybe some Adolf-Fan-Picture i don't have any issue with personally.

occ wrote:

I certainly hope that the German Tought Police has better thing to do than cauming through the 100K+ profile to find the couple of nazi reference

Unfortunately no - they even have some dedicated team(s) to crawl the internet and try at random times to force german ISPs to block such websites.

occ wrote:

Maybe we should start a collect to mouve the server in a free country

There's no such place on this planet, not inside this level of reality (politicans and shortbrainers are everywhere - same for lawyers)
Some very wise man stated this years ago - i'm referring here to James T. Kirk _________________Nothing is secure / Security is always a trade-off with usability / Do not assume anything / Trust no-one, nothing / Paranoia is your friend / Think for yourself

Well at least in germany you could (not avoid to) look at nice tits in nearly every store and/or place where magazines can be bought. No protection for minors in any way (only hard pornography is 18+). Nevertheless we (as beeing the mods) don't allow nudity in the forums because of the physics in US, even if i personally have no issue with that. I saw approx. 10.000+ tits before becoming 18 and i'm still a (some would say - to some extend) mentally healthy guy

The same happens in Spain and even TVE (Televisión Española - Spanish TV) shows that lighter side of spaniards. There must be a link between the level of repression in a society and psychopaths. It happens in the USA and to catholic priests. This imposed repression is what "far right" means, at least to me, no matter if they label themselves "fascists" or "communists" as they use the same means to achieve the same ends. "Far left" means totally the opposite and must exist only to overthrow its contrary. I believe in respecting individuality that acknowledges we're different though not "superior" nor "inferior".

Actually you probably should have just bugged the admins. Although your intentions are honroable, starting a forum discussion about a decision, which in the last instance is the decision of the admins to make, just gives space to wonderfully obscure pontifications about the nature of nationalsocialism, censorship, american vs german cliches, the relativistic lala-land of comparative travesties coupled with ranking in terms of *evilness* and pseudo-deep psychological diatribes about humanities uses of symbols. Not that there is anything wrong with this-it is important for young people to learn their arguing skills. But at the end of the day the admins of this forum will make a call. aAttempting to appeal to some enlightened comprehension on the part of the Gentoo userbase as to why Nazi shit shouldn't be tolerated is probably a wonderful exercise in futility.

when all is said and done in the forum we will know:
[/sarcasm on]
a) symbols are meaningless
b) Nazis weren't all that bad
c) You must have a problem if it bothers you
d) comparatively all things are equal
e) some people are offended by pink pigs
f) gentoo users are quite verbose in their postings
g) the amature debate club is alive and kicking
[/sarcasm off]
etc.

Now how this will help resolve the problem?

Simple -it won`t.

Back in the day when i was a mere user I held admins in a certain kind of awe-mostly due to their power. But I have been admininistrating for a couple of years now-I now know how many seconds my brain requires to recognize shit that shouldn't be tolerated and how long it takes for my fingers to do the work of excising such shit. Admins should simply ban/delete them. This is not an issue of freedom of speech-that any non-technical forum is provided by the gentoo admins and moderators is a generous gift of their time and energy and money. No one on these forums has a right to say *anything*-for there are no rights and/or laws stipulating that people have an inalienable right to post to the gentoo forums-the absence of laws which deny someone the right to do something does not imply the converse -that everyone has a right to everything.

As i understand it the user who used nazi symbols in his avatar was banned.Although I would love for the admins/moderators to formulate some general policy I do not really expect it from them-more importantly- recognizing and taking decisive steps is more important than explaining to others what your rationale behind doing so is. As long as the admins/moderators are on their toes I don't think this will become a big problem-if it does our admins/moderators simply aren't doing their jobs.

1) who cares about whether our opinion is universal(I don't care what the universe thinks;))
Prize question:
a. Name me one opinion which is universal ?
b. Name me one opinion which due to being universal is held by all ?
c. Name me one opinion which in being held by all is considered to be universal ?

2) So what ?
Prize Question:
a. How many people are currently offended by symbols associated with the names you just mentioned ?
b. How many people are so offended by this that they would stop visiting the forums.
c. Do you know what equivocation means ?

3) So what ?
Prize Question:
a. Do you know that equivocation means?

4) rinse, repeat, lather

5) no society anywhere at any time in any history has ever been completely free of any kind of censorship(US included)
-how do I know this- How i can i possibly make such a broad sweeping generalization ? It isn't possible-neither theoretically nor practically

6) You are right-being offended by something does not mean that the offensive thing does not exist. As a rule of thumb we are offended by things which exist. The mere existence of something offensive does not mean that it should be tolerated.

7) You are 100 percent right here...this is a fine line...we agree here.

If we were talking about taking some kind of corporal punitive action against those who post Nazi shit I would be concerned but what has been discussed is merely banning/deleting their accounts-is it too much to expect of people that when they participate in a community of people who help each other in solving technical problems related to Gentoo that they behave themselves in such a way as to not violently offend fellow community members?

The position of the moderator/admin team is that we do not want to make a policy specifically forbidding Nazi symbols, or anything else. We consider each avatar on a case-by-case basis, and if we find them obscene or offensive, we will ask the user in question to remove it. Out of over 100,000 users, I only know of 3 who used Nazi symbols in their avatars. One was banned for other reasons, one removed theirs voluntarily when we asked, and the last was a throwaway account designed for shock value which got banned immediately. This is the way we've done it in the past, and the way we will carry on doing things, but we don't want to make a specific policy about something that occurs so rarely.

Locked, because the arguments are going round and round in circles, and this thread doesn't seem to be at all productive any more._________________No-one's more important than the earthworm.

[edit - this post was being written by one mod as the thread was locked by another
yes, mods can post to locked threads]

IWBCMAN,

Thats a lovely summing up post - I was tempted to lock the thread then and there. However, that would stifle this discussion and be seen as the sort of censorship we try to avoild. My email and PM would get filled with objections to my action.

Most of the discussion here in favour of banning certain symbolism appears to equate banning the symbolism with banning the user. The two are not the same The user in question, who had the avtar that started this discussion, changed his avtar when (s)he was requested to do so. As far as I know, they are not banned but I can check if you wish.

Forum moderators do just that - They Moderate - by stepping in to curb the worst excesses of users in all directions, not only avtars.
Moderators and admins will continue to do that too, both in response to their own observations and in response to users drawing their attention to percieved issues. Most times, (as in the instance that sparked this thread) its resolved amicably. This thrread was started after the issue was resolved to discuss a possible policy.

My view (as an individual, not a mod) is that the moderation we have now works fairly well. Few genuine users are deprived of the use of this valuable resource due to a brief lapse into poor behaviour of any sort. Most respond to a short exchange of PMs pointing out that they really need to reconsider their ways.

For the sake of discussion, lets suppose a policy to ban Nazi symbolism was adopted.
There are two ways it can be enforced. Avtars are turned off altogether or cases are dealth with as they arise.
Turning off avtars altogether would be a backward step - they make it easy to scan a thread for posts by a particular user.
Dealing with things on a case by case basis is what we do now - so nothing would actually change._________________Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

madisonicus, please read the above two posts by Maedhros and NeddySeagoon for our reasons not to forbid what a lot of us consider extremely bad taste._________________Please add [solved] to the initial post's subject line if you feel your problem is resolved. Help answer the unanswered